Saddened

I'm saddened by Jack Vance's going. The world is diminished by his disappearance from the literary world. One of my favourite authors. I don't think I could count the number of times I'e re-read his Demon Princes Series.

But,

But what will that do to house prices?

I'm doing my best

I've just bought a new machine. Not that my old one is worn out, or obsolete.The machine will replace one of Asus's netbooks. An EeePC 1008HA, arguably the prettiest thing they ever brought out. I've only bought the new one, an Asus 1225B because Asus say that they're no longer going to make the netbook model, and It was about the very last opportunity to buy a machine which DID NOT have Windows 8 on it. Not that I use the windows bit much, since I'm a long time Linux user. But Win is useful for the odd application where Linux doesn't have the equivalent. So, next year may be a poor year too, with Win 8 the only alternative. Has wnyone a good word for Win 8. I certainly have not heard one.

The battery is only one part of the problem

And a minor part at that.The REAL problem is charging the things in the time scale of a petrol/diesel tank re-charge. And that's never going to happen. Hydrocarbon fuel is so energy packed the the "re-charging" rate can be considered to be in the range of megawatts. It'd certainly put quite a dent in the local power supply to do the same with an electrical re-charge.

shelf life.

If my local supermarket, a well known company, is anything to go by, they must keep their tomatoes on a shelf in the dtore room for about 19 days before putting them out for sale.

If Only....

If only the companies would get their business properly sorted out, there wouldn't be the need for so many support staff, anyway. It's only when thing go wrong, that customers turn to Customer Support, which in truth, the seldom get. I had an account with Voda, for about ten years, but since I live in a no-signal area, it got very little use, except for an emergency phone in the car.. But when I got one of their femtocell units and had to use their Customer Service, because the courier lost the package en-route, it took me five weeks to get a refund. Feeling that a complaint was due. It took me four months to get absolutely no response to my complaint about their Customer Service. I'm now with another provider, but hgave little confidence that they're any better. I contrast, I do a lot of business with Amnazon, which seems to run like clockwork. Only once have I used Customer Service, on an item which was giving trouble, and that issue was cleared up, satisfactorily, in no time at all.

Proof?

This is not proof. This is merely the assertions of a group with a lot to lose if the "truth" ran the other way. If we go back 50 years, the consensus among scientists was that Continental Drift, Plate Techtonics, whatever you like to call it were a myth. And they had good science to prove it, too.. Go back even further, and the consensus was that the World was flat, and if you went West far enough, you'd fall off the edge. All backed by science. Go back between the two and the consensus was that the atom was an indivisible entity. I could go on and on, and on.

Query

I don't quite get the thrust of this article. The sun and the planets, in any system are all developed from the same dust cloud and therefore have identical mixes. The only difference, in practical terms is that the planets are drastically impoverished in the light elements, hydrogen and helium, particularly in the inner orbits, having lost this in the creation of the planet in it's particular orbit

Fuming

MS must be fuming at this. Do you think that the'll go out and do a 'Nook' on this. Go out and buy the ISS so they can have it use their systems?

Traditional verbiage

It's sort of traditional in motoring circles to never give a bad review of a new model. You over-grade the innovations and ignore the fact that this is an over-priced, short lived device with no proven long term durability.. The magazines know well, that a review that is a tad critical will meet up with a serious shortfall in advertising for the forseeable future.

Much simpler

I've a much simpler system than that. I run a white Land Rover Defender. When I come back to the car park, I simply look for the large white object projecting above the multi-coloured array of boys toys.

A minor point

A minotr point I feel that I should point out. ALL tax paid by a company, and that includes Corporation Tax, is derived from the charge made by that company, on it's customers. So, if Google did not pay the tax, then it's goods and services are therefore cheaper to the customer, all thing being equal.. Thje Governmeat would love Google to pay higher taxes, but that does not mean that the customer would be paying lower personal taxes as a consequence of the government gaining a new revenue stream. It seems to me, of late that the government has given up it's real purpose of governing the country, but has become, like any other company, it's there to maximise it's profits.

Magnesium?

Shouldn't that be Lithium Manganese Oxide? The Beeb has it as LiMnO2

Doubts

I'd tend to doubt any organisation that begins it's spiel with:-

"The cost of clean & distributed electricity generation like wind and solar has fallen dramatically over the past few years making them the cheapest sources of electricity in the world."

Yhey're obviously not talking about the real world, so perhaps their flywheel is in the same world as cheap wind and solar power.

What do they do with them?

From my experience with tablets, there's so little you can actually do with them, and this applies almost equally to Apple and Android vewrsions. It makes me wonder what people who carry the bloody things around actually DO to earn the daily crust.

All very well.

All very well, nicely written. But, the article didn't actually tell you anything. I've been (almost) exclusively using Linux for years. However, I've not managed to persuade a single one of my friends to install it, simply because they regard it as "hard to install", which it isn't. Well, at least the distro I use isn't. Most people don't want the perceived problems of installation, and will always stick with what the hardware came with. Even if it's Vista.

Re, London

If you want an example of what I mean, have a look at this link

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-21441070

Progress

Ah, don't you just love it. Umpteen billion spent on a cable, so that people on both sides of the Atlantic and sell each other worthless stock. Perhaps the logic of it all can be explained to the great unwashed

London?

I really do hope that you're not touting the population of London as being representative of the British people. A more pampered, arrogant, overpaid, useless lot, in the main, that it's possible to imagine. The further you go North (and West), the more patient, polite, friendly and long suffering the population becomes.

non contigeous orbits

How are they thinking of matching the respective kinetic energy of a cargo load of ore on the asteroid to that it would have in a holding orbit around the earth? Not to mention vector matching

Here we go again

Sigh. Here we go again, comparing taxed oranges with untaxed lemons. And how much does wind power cost when the wind isn't blowing?

Couldn't have happened to a nicer company

I've been having an ongoing argument with Vodafone for the past three months, and I'm not even past the door. I shall be away, as soon as my PAYG credit is used up. They couldn't tempt me back if they paid me to use their network

Forgive my ignorance

Forgive my ignorance, but what did 2e2 do? I don't know why, but the old saying "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:

And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.", comes into my mind

As I recollect

As I recollect there were a number of very good WP programmes out originally. Ami Pro seemed to be the easiest to use. Where MS scopred was that they refused to acknowledge any other format than their own. Others would open, or save in any number of formats, MS in only theirs. So, if you wanted to send a document to anyone who ran MS Office, then it had to be .doc format. So offices tended to go for MS whenever an update came around. It simply froze all the opposition out. It certainly wasn't better.

And the significance?

I'd not read too much into this. The reason for most Christmas present choises is panic. "Whatever can we buy for Sidney, that he hasn't got already? I know, we'll buy him a tablet". The fate of most of these choices is frenzied use for a couple of months, or less, then they're back on the shelf. I've a couple of tablets, and sometimes wonder why I ever bought them. They're good for some applications. Mine gets most use as an expensive reader. However the desktop is good at everything. For portability I've a good netbook, which will do practically eveything the desktop will do, but is slower and more cramped. but will do it, in a package practically the same as a tablet.

Re Capt Blue Bear

Quite so. The customer does pay for the wages and rent. As I said the Company is simply a device for making profits, nothing more, nothing less. Which is probably why I, as someone who has always worked for Companies, who strive to keep costs (wages) down, has finished up as poor as a church mouse, whilst my brother, who effectively worked for the Government, has pots of money, since when they need money, they simply demand it.

Who pays the tax?

Think on this. Companies do not pay tax. The Company is a device for producing a profit, which is what is left after the costs have been taken away from the income. Tax is a cost, and as such is passed on the the buyer of the Company's product. If the buyer is another Company, then the cost is passed on to that Company's customers. Eventually you get down to the final customer, who does not have anyone to pass it down to, and they pay ALL the tax. So if a Company is avoiding tax, it has fewer costs to pass down to it's customers, and the customer benefits. If you think that the Government uses the taxes it gathers to benefit the population, then they should never have let you out of the nursery.

Do we?

As far as I recollect, we do not trust computers to fly jets. There are usually three computers and the output of each is compared with the other two. If one of them is different, then a human is called in to fix the problem

pie in the sky

Sheer pie in the sky. Hysteresis losses in the disc from heating and cooling will far far greater than the energy converted to the dynamic. I've vague feeling that even the ancient greeks had bettered this. A long iron bar, alternately exposed and shaded from the sun would operate a ratchet with truly enormous forces. Even the shading function could be built in, and automatic. Wouldn't work in this country, mind. No sun.

Don't worry

No need to worry. By now they'll have come to the conclusion that there's no intelligent life on Earth.

You have to hand it to 'em.Taking all that kit down there without anyone asking "Does it work?"

Oh, no

Oh, no. Not "the Son of the USPTO".

Or

Or, of course, it could be five degrees colder, and then we'd be really screwed. It's only conjecture, and one not even based on realistic assumptions. Just a minute, while I put some more coal on the fire.

Re Bye bye Samsung

In my case, I'm looking expectantly at JCB

Bye bye Samsung, then

It's a fairly true saying that the first generation makes the family fortune. The next generation adds to it. And the third generation blows it away

look on the bright side

It's not all gloom. Since share trading is a zero sum deal, every loss by one trader is a gain for another. The skill factor is to be of the one sort and not the other--consistently

I was rather amused by the 'spin' put on the statement

We are investigating why the temperature rise at the surface has SLOWED in recent years, including how ocean heat content changes and the effects of aerosols from atmospheric pollution may have influenced global climate."

When in fact, according to the figures, the warming has STOPPED. Even when admitting that they have a problem, they have to lie.

I dunno about that

This planet has CFC's, but I'm not that sure that it supports intelligent life, from what I can see.

sixty million

Sixty million would buy an awful lot of paper exercise and text books, which would have a far longer life than the usual fondleslab. On the other hand, you couldn't say that the dog ate your tablet

A significant factor

The significant factor which seems to have been missed is that these "acidic" waters are upwelling DEEP waters. Deep waters are naturally bound to be more acidic. Calcium Carbonate dissolves in sea water at depth. All the limestone sea deposits are shallow sea deposits. But the formation of shells is a shallow water phenomenon. When shelled creatures die iin deep water areas, the shells dissolve before they reach the bottom. The Calcium and the carbon dioxide go into slution, and only reach the surface at upwelling zones. The increased level of nutrients in these waters (Calcium and carbon dioxide ) lead to prolific plant and animal growth in these ares

So the presence of higher levels of carbon dioxide in these upwelling zones is first a natural phenomenon, and secondly, of such an age as to be well before the accepted recent increase in atmospheric Carbon dioxide, however it was sourced. Most of the world's oceanic surface water, BTW is acknowledged as being almost totally barren of life, due to the absence of nutrients essential to sea life

A real test

Planting the heater between two polystyrene blocks, I would have thought would tell you nothing, other than that it doesn't take much to heat up polystyrene. I'd have thought it better to wrap the heater round something with the dimensions of the rovket motor, and about the same mass, and stuff the whole thing inside a domestic freezer. Make your test as near the physical makeup of the actual object as possible. You could do the same test inside a domestic fridge and then you'd have two sets of results from which you could extrapolate for even more exttreme temperatures with at least some hope of getting near the real thing. As the earlier poster remarked, radiation is not markedly affected by atmospheric pressure.